You have been logged out of PLUS+

Our records show that you are currently receiving a free subscription to Supply Chain Management Review magazine, or your subscription has expired.
To access our premium content, you need to upgrade your subscription to our PLUS+ status.

Sorry, but your login to PLUS+ has failed.

A.I. and the path to breakthrough supply chain planning

Just as electricity transformed every industry 100 years ago, Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is poised to transform every industry in the coming decade.

By Sean Monahan and Michael Hu ·
January 25, 2018

Just as electricity transformed every industry 100 years ago, Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is poised to transform every industry in the coming decade. A.I. is already changing the ways that consumers and companies interact. Consumers rely on Siri, Alexa or Google Now for intelligent personal assistance. Companies employ predictive analytics to deliver coupons based on shopper preferences. Driverless smart trucks and cars are on the horizon. The consumer’s heightened expectations of personalization, localization and speed are increasing the complexity of the supply chain.

This complexity is resulting in growing cost inefficiencies in the supply chain as companies respond with increased numbers of functional planners, custom applications, and micro-segmentation of processes, metrics and a flurry of Excel spreadsheets straining a companies’ ability to plan. Input signals such as POS data, CRM data and localized social media data are exploding, making supply chains data rich but insight poor. Organizations are realizing that traditional process improvement and optimization is not sufficient to solve these structural S&OP problems. Instead, companies need to pivot and leverage A.I. and related technologies to drive innovation in supply chain planning while making humans more agile and efficient.

A.I. and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) represent two emerging areas that can significantly alter the supply chain planning ecosystem. (See figure 1) A.I. is the discipline of making analytical machines intelligent; enabling an entity to function appropriately and with foresight in its environment.

Just as electricity transformed every industry 100 years ago, Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is poised to transform every industry in the coming decade. A.I. is already changing the ways that consumers and companies interact. Consumers rely on Siri, Alexa or Google Now for intelligent personal assistance. Companies employ predictive analytics to deliver coupons based on shopper preferences. Driverless smart trucks and cars are on the horizon. The consumer’s heightened expectations of personalization, localization and speed are increasing the complexity of the supply chain.

This complexity is resulting in growing cost inefficiencies in the supply chain as companies respond with increased numbers of functional planners, custom applications, and micro-segmentation of processes, metrics and a flurry of Excel spreadsheets straining a companies’ ability to plan. Input signals such as POS data, CRM data and localized social media data are exploding, making supply chains data rich but insight poor. Organizations are realizing that traditional process improvement and optimization is not sufficient to solve these structural S&OP problems. Instead, companies need to pivot and leverage A.I. and related technologies to drive innovation in supply chain planning while making humans more agile and efficient.

A.I. and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) represent two emerging areas that can significantly alter the supply chain planning ecosystem. (See figure 1) A.I. is the discipline of making analytical machines intelligent; enabling an entity to function appropriately and with foresight in its environment.

If history is our guide, economies take a turn every nine years. Yet time and again, a strong business cycle and fading memories convince us the good times will go on forever. Ten years after the great recession, we surveyed 100 manufacturing firms to find out if businesses are ready to fight through the next recession.

Is Digital Transformation a risk or an opportunity? This webinar will detail Manufacturing industry challenges and how using IoT can address these challenges through optimizing logistics, improving processes and gaining meaningful insights.